Both the official BitTorrent and uTorrent clients are vulnerable to a remote denial-of-service attack, due to the way they handle user-supplied data. Versions found to be vulnerable so far are the official BitTorrent 6.0 client,
uTorrent 1.7.x, uTorrent 1.6.x and uTorrent 1.8-alpha-7834.
Security vulnerabilities in BitTorrent clients are relatively rare, although not unheard of. Luigi Auriemma, a Milan-based security expert, claims to have found a vulnerability in various BitTorrent clients based on the way they handle user-supplied data. The flaw allows an attacker to crash the application, effectively denying service to legitimate users. Code execution is not possible, which means there is little reason for users to panic.
So far, the problem appears to affect these clients:
- BitTorrent 6.0 (build 5535)
- uTorrent 1.7.5 (build 4602)
- uTorrent 1.8 (alpha 7834)
Luigi is reporting that earlier versions of these clients may also be vulnerable and this appears to have been confirmed by the uTorrent team. The problems are confirmed to exist on Windows versions of the software. As yet, Mac and Linux versions of the official BitTorrent client have not been tested.
Bookmarks